This past weekend, my brother’s fiance had a baby, and now I have a niece. Which is absolutely insane. Is my brother ready for fatherhood? Sure, yeah, I think so. Am I ready for aunthood? That depends. What does “aunthood” entail? Is this like, a full-time gig? Because I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.
What’s she going to call me? Aunt Kristin? Can a kid even pronounce that? How old does she need to be before I can start swearing around her? What if she asks me to help her with her math homework? Am I going to have to like, make shit up? What if her favorite TV show is Two and a Half Men? These are things I have to think about.
Well, the baby is born now, so these questions went from theoretical to legitimate in what seems to be an inexplicably short amount of time. But let’s rewind, and go back to the making of this cake, which happened about a month ago, when Caroline Grace was but a bump on Kateri’s abdomen.
The baby shower took place at my home in New Canaan, Connecticut. It was a lavish affair. There were balloons. There was wine. There were asparagus stalks wrapped in meat. There was rain.
I actually baked this cake. I knew that people were going to be interested in eating this cake, as opposed to just looking at it, so I did my best with a coconut cake recipe I found. I baked it in New York, then hauled it up to New Canaan to execute the decoration the day before the party.
You may remember me talking about my cousin Kelly at some point – she’s the one who got me into this cake thing. Well she lives in LA at the moment, but she was back on the East coast for the week to oversee her protege’s progress. Also, she was taking some meetings in NYC. But she was mostly there for me, and don’t let her tell you otherwise.
My point is, she has a newish baby named Tatum, and I got to know her while I decorated the cake. I’m not a big baby gusher. My uterus doesn’t weep with longing when I see babies. But Tatum was fascinating. I think that this is because I’ve never actually been that close to a baby that age before, let alone been able to like, hang out with it. In my experience, though, women do generally have baby fever (a less lethal strain of Beiber Fever), and in honor of that dumb phenomenon, here’s this:
The construction of this was pretty straightforward. I made two tiers – one 9″ and one 6″. I layered circles around the edge and tried my best to get a good gradient. I piped on some lettering, mounted the moon and star, smooshed the little chocolate balls into place, and called it a day.
The party began, people started showing up. People from my Italian side, people from my Irish side, they all mingled. Which doesn’t happen often. Oh and my kindergarten teacher, who was also my brother’s kindergarten teacher, showed up. It was awesome. Until I realized that I could say the words “Oh my god! I haven’t seen you in like, twenty years!” to someone, and not be exaggerating. That was a moment. I spent a few minutes staring at my lawn after I said that.
If you’re at all familiar with the sequence of events at a baby shower, you know that the parent(s)-to-be is/are required to open every gift in front of everyone at the party, and everyone is required to make noises when every practical, impractical, and quippy-onesie gift is revealed.
I had to write down all the gifts as they were being opened, and who gave them.
This is me, sitting in a corner with my little notepad, giving my dog a death stare as he sniffs the mountain of pulled pork I grabbed to get me through this most boring of rituals.
And here are some pictures of the gifts they got. I may have adjusted them slightly in Photoshop to enhance visibility.
Bacon!
A Barfing Pup!
Every expecting mother needs a Sad Batman.
A good source of iron.
Someone got them the Declaration of Independence, which I thought was excessive.
Gotta catch ‘em all.
That was fun.
Then it came time to cut the cake. Since my cake wasn’t enough to feed the seventy-something people there, my mom picked up a store-bought creation that just about made my eyes bleed.
As I was cutting up the cake, I hear someone in my ear asking if it’s ok if this person shoves a piece of cake into my brother’s face. I was a little distracted, so the question didn’t quite make it to the rational part of my brain, and my immediate, intuitive response was, of course, yes. So my cousin Kelsey sprang into action and just annihilated Joey with a slice of face cake.
Unfortunately, since my cakes are mostly fondant and almost no mushy frosting, the result was not as satisfying as, say, a pie to the face would be. So in essence, Kelsey punched my brother in the face, and there just happened to be a piece of cake in her hand.
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